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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26710192">maybe we'd get through this undefeated</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosevtea/pseuds/rosevtea'>rosevtea</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Haikyuu!!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Royalty, Arranged Marriage, Developing Relationship, M/M, Mutual Pining, Near Drowning, minor kmsn and iizusaku, oc for one scene</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:54:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>9,833</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26710192</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosevtea/pseuds/rosevtea</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Things Miya Atsumu is quickly losing patience for: his kingdom, Hinata Shouyou, and the steady depletion of his midnight snacks, in that order.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hinata Shouyou/Miya Atsumu</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>230</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>AtsuHina Exchange, Recommended AtsuHina Fics</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>maybe we'd get through this undefeated</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daiyayanna/gifts">Daiyayanna</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>CW: near drowning scene at the very beginning</p><p>title is from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kwj_X1PVDU">are you bored yet?</a> by Wallows (ft. Clairo).</p><p>I really liked your royalty au prompt! I hope I can do it some justice :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Atsumu figures that the first time he meets the boy that would take a fistful of his heart in his hands, he’d be doing something stupid like drowning. Just his luck.</p><p>It’s probably retribution for something he did to Samu, or something Samu did to him, or the time he dropped Sakusa’s jacket from the coat hanger because he was mad at him and Sakusa was <em>right there</em>. It would have been a sin to pass up an opportunity like that.</p><p>Okay, so maybe he deserves retribution. Big deal.</p><p>It starts with a dream, though the dream is a series of small steps that turn into large mistakes that turn into Miya Atsumu’s impulse to fish, powered by the insistent need to piss off Samu and make his own damn food.</p><p>Here is the mistake: Atsumu can’t swim. Everyone knows Atsumu can’t swim. Only Atsumu himself is ignorant to this fact, even though it was his own nine-year old brain that unilaterally declared that he would learn how to swim himself and proceeded to almost drown in the lake. It’s fine. Everything is fine. Sure, when white had crowded his vision, he had believed in god for a second and might have let a prayer or two slip out, but it’s fine. It was less of a prayer and more of a cry for help, and the point is that Atsumu doesn’t believe in god and can swim.</p><p>Evidently, only one of those things are true, and Atsumu comes to the irritating conclusion that he should probably tell the truth sometimes for life-threatening situations like this as the sand under his foot caves and his heart rattles. He’s in the water before he can scream and this river is deep for no reason. He’s in the process of realizing just how deep the river goes when the current catches along his clothes and crawls inside his exoskeleton and whispers, <em>you will die here, Miya Atsumu. You came here out of spite and no one knows or cares and you will die</em>.</p><p>Does he let go of the armful of stubbornness he hauls around? Not yet. The fear building in the corner of his mouth, where the water has already invaded, though. It lingers.</p><p>He claws through the water with tangled limbs and tries to make a guttural scream but water eagerly rips at his lips and his skin and his eyes with greedy little hooks. Atsumu makes progress, kind of, and then he’s strung along the current again. It tap dances along his bone marrow like an exorcism in progress. Even more insistently, now. He’s reaching the end of a timer.</p><p>But here is the dream and the moment Atsumu can recall from the edge of his teeth: an arm breaks through the surface, far more elegantly than his freefall, and grabs a fistful of his shirt. There is strength in the fingers that pull him out. A wariness, if he wanted to be a cynical asshole. And he is, to an extent, except he bursts through the surface and what awaits him is not a boy, but the physical manifestation of gravitational pull. Light even dances in soft-looking orange hair, mercilessly refracting in the water he shakes out. Atsumu wonders briefly, deliriously, what deities so loved this boy as to craft him out of the sun and dapple it along his skin.</p><p>Something is slipping past his cheek, but Atsumu can’t be bothered to swipe at it. He is boneless as the odd, magnetic man pulls him out of the water and hauls him onto the shore. There is a gentleness, maybe, in the way pebbles dig into his spine when he carelessly lands among the grass. There is a kindness, surely, in the concern washing itself over the sunshine lying taunt in the curve of this stranger’s spine as he carefully approaches him. Samu would say he’s desperate, but Samu didn’t just drown, so Atsumu blocks out the suspiciously more sensible voice inside his head and pushes himself upward.</p><p>“Uh, thanks, I guess?” Atsumu’s eloquence has abandoned him and is also jeering from a safe distance like a little bitch. “Sorry, I mean—you saved my life. Thanks.”</p><p>The stranger laughs and the mystical quality of his smile chooses now to make itself known as it unfurls into the light in glorious detail. Atsumu takes one look and wants to rip it apart or swallow it whole. He wonders if it would shimmer in the hollow of his chest, sitting ripe next to his heart. The desire echoes. He stills.</p><p>“You guess?” The stranger has a crooked grin. It fades into thoughtful concern, and Atsumu doesn’t believe in god, but he would build a tabernacle and watch it crumble for this moment. “You almost drowned. Are you sure you’re okay?”</p><p>If it were anyone else, Atsumu might bite back with a <em>do you think I’m fuckin’ okay?</em> because being honest has never been the problem, but he wants to scatter the sunlight that has dipped down to this boy’s clavicle—only a little bit, though. He withholds his words in a daze and tells himself it’s a matter of curiosity, nothing more. He tries, “Yeah, I just—” and water chokes up his throat. He wheezes, bending over the grass on his elbows to cough it out.</p><p>Sometime in the middle of his reconciliation with a steady airstream, a pat on his back startles him out of his reverie. Against his will, he looks up. That same worry looks him in the eye, pinning him in place with unfair certainty as the hand on his back begins moving in a circle. Soothing, steady, throwing him off his axis as the warmth seeps in between his shoulder blades, resting along his bottom lip.</p><p>It aches when Atsumu rolls his shoulders. The hand stops, then swirls in the opposite direction. An insistent black hole, pulling him in.</p><p>“Don’t worry!” Even his voice bursts warmth into life. “You weren’t under for too long. When I fell in a couple years ago, I got stuck, and that’s when you’re really in trouble.”</p><p>“You’ve fallen in before?”</p><p>The hand freezes again. A glacier has slid into a room that should have stayed locked. Atsumu winces because he does, in fact, have the self-awareness to feel bad. “Yeah,” the stranger says. Short, dry. “But whatever. What are you doing here?”</p><p>Atsumu looks down at himself. Sopping, miserable, completely devoid of any of his royal garments. His hair, carefully styled and parted from this morning, sits on his forehead in flayed clumps. A tragedy.</p><p>“Was trying to fish,” he mumbles.</p><p>And the stranger has the audacity to laugh, except it sounds more like a god-given right as it graces Atsumu’s ears. Light gathers on his cupid’s bow as his lips curl into a wide smile and it looks horribly like a promise. Atsumu looks away.</p><p>“<em>Fish</em>? You’re new around here, aren’t you?” He straightens up. “If I’m around the area next time, I can show you where everyone goes. There’s this beautiful lake nearby!”</p><p>Atsumu’s coherency pieces itself together enough for him to ask, “Next time?”</p><p>“Yeah!” And the boy carved from the sun gives him a piece of starlight as he tilts his head and smiles, shyly this time. It is molting hot in his hands. Atsumu wants to cradle it. “I mean, if you want to.”</p><p><em>I want to</em>, Atsumu thinks, but his mouth doesn’t cooperate and he grandly tries to stand instead of responding. When he falls, he acknowledges that he probably deserves the unhinged laughter that swings his way.</p><p>Here is the third mistake: Atsumu never asks for his name. Or any way to contact him. The urge to slam his foot into the nearest tree manifests as soon as the boy vanishes from sight and he resists the urge to scream because he is, in fact, a man of dignity. Mostly.</p><p>Instead, it culminates in wailing to Samu’s face about the beautiful boy who saved him from drowning as soon as he gets back, soaking wet and all.</p><p>“Wait, what the fuck,” Samu shouts. “Go back to the part where you almost drowned.”</p><p>“Who almost drowned?” Sunarin walks in. His hands are in his pockets because he remembered to wear pants with pockets this time.</p><p>He can’t resist. “Nice job remembering what pockets are this time, Sunarin.”</p><p>“Shut the fuck up. You’re the one who almost drowned, aren’t you?”</p><p>He has nothing to say against that, but Atsumu isn’t a quitter. “Yeah, but I didn’t, dipshit.”</p><p>“Clearly.” Suna does the thing where he manages to look like he’s staring right into you and thinks that everything he sees is boring. Fuck him, Atsumu’s interesting as hell. “You’re thinking about something stupid right now, aren’t you?”</p><p>“GET TO THE FUCKING INFIRMARY, TSUMU.”</p><p>.</p><p>Atsumu gets to the infirmary. Nothing is wrong, which lines up with how he feels physically. Mentally, the warmth of sunshine boy’s hand burns the pattern he traced on his back and Atsumu is miserable.</p><p>He talks about this for the next two weeks to anyone who will listen, which is basically everyone against their will. Komori is the only one who doesn’t publicly mock him and Atsumu decrees him to be the only decent person in a 70-meter radius. </p><p>“I think Komori’s just being nice,” Sunarin offers like an asshole. They’re in the stables, so it is perfectly acceptable for Atsumu to hurl the saddle at his face. Sunarin dodges (of course) and darts over to Atsumu’s side of the room with a bored grace that’s, quite frankly, offensive.</p><p>Atsumu sticks his tongue out in the grace period he has before Sunarin strikes. “I think you’re just jealous Komori’s smiling at me and not you. I can see you staring, you know.”</p><p>“So we’re making stuff up now.” Sunarin runs up and jabs him. It’s as sharp as a blunted knife, but Atsumu still grits his teeth and swears because the accuracy hurts more than the hit itself. “Seriously, we get it. You fell in love with someone who saved your dumbass from drowning and you didn’t even get their name like a fool.”</p><p>Atsumu pulls another saddle from the wall. It only rattles the hinges a little.</p><p>“Stop pouting, it doesn’t look good on you.”</p><p>“That’s your opinion,” Atsumu sulks. “And I wasn’t making shit up. You should see yourself whenever Komori talks to you, you’re so damn obvious.”</p><p>(He’s not even lying. Sunarin is known for his lethargic habits off the training field and his vicious ability to maneuver past his opponents on the field and the dozens of barbed wires he’s strung up regarding anything that happened before the day he slammed five insistent fists on the front door and demanded a job in the castle. He had been eleven. His audacity had been awarded with both a coveted spot and Atsumu’s immediate affections, which lasted for all of two days until Sunarin joined him in the field for the first time and told him his aim was shit.</p><p><em>That</em> Sunarin is the one who inverted his entire damn schedule to line up the time he visited the field with Komori’s regularly scheduled training. He doesn’t lower his barbs, but the way his shoulders relax when Komori waves at him or nudges his shoulder or—does fucking <em>anything</em>, really, is painfully monumental.)</p><p>Sunarin rolls his eyes as he slings the saddle onto his horse. “<em>I’m</em> the obvious one. Right.”</p><p>“Hey!” Atsumu shouts, but Sunarin’s already hauled himself onto the saddle and kicked his horse into motion. Fucker.</p><p>.</p><p>And, okay, he knows that the gravitational pull won’t be waiting for him near the river because who actually takes a nearly-drowned fool to a lake when the nearly-drowned fool was too incoherent to even confirm a date? If that’s even what he was offering. Atsumu will probably never know and that’s fine.</p><p>Also, he almost drowned. Maybe they could have gone for a walk or something. It doesn’t matter.</p><p>It doesn’t stop him from taking his horse to the river, blurs of green and brown slipping past him as the sky yawns into the edge of daylight above him. It doesn’t stop him from sitting a fair distance away from the edge, sullenly throwing rocks into crystallized water, watching clear droplets land on the surface. Reimagining a scene where the stranger didn’t take a fistful of his heart and did away with it, or a scene where the stranger still took it and left some of his own behind, too.</p><p>It can’t really stop him, because all he is doing is answering this small pulsation of gravity in the lingering edges of salvation. A small price to pay. A small lie to feed in, because there’s nothing wrong with feeding a dream.</p><p>.</p><p>“Tsumu, you’re not gonna find him,” Samu says three weeks into his efforts. They linger outside the dining room, the way they usually do when one of them wants to say something.</p><p>“Shut up.” There’s no real heat behind it. “I can do whatever the hell I wanna do.”</p><p>Samu scoffs, the sound familiar enough that Atsumu preemptively jumps backward to avoid the smack to his shoulder that kind of stings a little (he’ll never admit it)<em>.</em> “Yeah, whatever, but don’tcha think it’s a little sad?”</p><p>It’s very sad, actually. “What if I just developed a sudden affection for horseback riding, huh, Samu?”</p><p>“You’re shitty at lying.” Samu stops by the end of the hallway. He’s not subtle, either. Asshole only lingers like this when he thinks he’s giving him world-ending advice. “And you always get unreasonably attached when you know you shouldn’t. Tsumu, you should stop soon.”</p><p>Atsumu hates having a twin. Samu’s observations eternally go nowhere else but to the bottom of his soul. “Samu.” More resigned than he had intended. Bitterly honest. Samu raises an eyebrow, because it always goes like this. “I know.”</p><p>.</p><p>And then his mother announces his engagement on the first day of the next month at 8am sharp, because Atsumu’s sleep schedule is laid to rest against her unwillingness to go without her morning coffee for ten minutes.</p><p>“I’m <em>what</em>?” Atsumu blurts out in the middle of the main hall. Osamu sends him a sharp look, but he’s pretty damn sure he’s earned the right to be surprised.</p><p>“Engaged,” Miya Natsumi repeats calmly. Her presence on the throne commands reverence, but Atsumu has long-since grown immune to her inherent terror. Her intentional terror is another story. “Osamu went through it too.”</p><p>“I would have liked a warning,” Atsumu mourns. “Can’t I get a list of suitors or something?”</p><p>Samu, standing next to him, huffs quietly. This is the one thing he doesn’t impose himself into.</p><p>“I know it’s not ideal.” And here, his mother’s thumb settles under her middle finger and harshly rubs the skin underneath with loose purpose. Samu’s eyes track it with intensity he doesn’t usually carry, which is the only thing that convinces Atsumu that yes, this is real, his mother <em>is</em> nervous about this. “But recently, Karasuno offered—”</p><p>“Karasuno?” Samu asks the question this time. “I thought the northeast was always dangerous ‘cause of them?”</p><p>“We’ve been enemies for years,” Atsumu adds.</p><p>Natsumi grimaces, sharp and unforgiving, but the look isn’t aimed at either of them. “There’s been a shift of power recently. Their new royal advisor is requesting an attempt at an alliance.”</p><p>This is bullshit. Samu knows this is bullshit; his posture has gone ramrod-straight, fingers frozen like a dagger in midair. Atsumu stands by the steps that lead to the throne before he’s even fully shaded the facts in, is already throwing his hands up before the impulsivity can register in his head. He’s mapping up the ways in which this can fuck up the trajectory of his being before fingers can flutter open and shut, calculating how close he is to losing it. For once, he reels back before he can commit to reckless demands with no payoff. His life has never been his, not in the way others can choose to climb up the cliff or plant their feet at the bottom of the ravine and shout their way to the skies, and he knows that. He is made to be a king in anything but this. In everything but this.</p><p>“How the hell can we <em>trust</em> them.” His fingers curl tight enough to break skin, and he purses his lips together. Red blooms under his fingertips and over the corners of his vision, the mantra he could never quite escape. “Don’t you remember the last time we—”</p><p>“Atsumu.”</p><p>The fist Natsumi slams onto the armrest echoes, iron in the oscillations and her gaze and the curl of her lip. Atsumu has already lost, but he is the same brand of stubborn. He shuts up and doesn’t back down.</p><p>“Of course I <em>remember</em>.” Her hand cups the edge of the armrest. Almost in a show of disinterest, but Atsumu knows better. “We are not bumbling idiots waiting to get taken advantage of. Your father and I’ve prepared the necessities in case they decided to betray us and start another war. Rest assured, their new royal adviser is certainly <em>new</em>. We have swayed him.”</p><p>Behind him, he knows Samu shivers.</p><p>“Who,” he drags out slowly, “is it?”</p><p>Natsumi smiles faintly. The bitterness she bestows on him when she looks him in the eye is a sight to behold. Very on-brand for his mother.</p><p>“Hinata Shouyou.” There is a haunting quality that callously concaves into the cracks along Atsumu’s smile. Trepidation smiles toothily and readily taps against the base of his throat. “We have no information on him, but he is next in line for the throne. This change is recent. Observe him when he comes to stay with us.”</p><p>Atsumu shrugs with all the carelessness of someone who has pretended to climb the cliff tops his entire life. “Yeah, sure.” And icy indifference forces the world into focus. “Wait, stay?”</p><p>.</p><p>“Yes, stay,” his mother and Samu and Sunarin all say in various points of the three days it takes Karasuno’s procession to arrive at their gates.</p><p>Itachiyama, who they have a proper alliance with, has agreed to stay until Karasuno vacates their lands. Nice of them, except knowing his parents, something dangerous lurks in the fine print. Not that he really cares.</p><p>Atsumu takes advantage of his last moments of freedom with his poison of choice.</p><p>“Aren’t you so glad you get to stay for longer, Omi-kun?” Atsumu nocks his bow without looking down. He’s not really sure why he does it other than to prove a point, which is all the motivation he needs for most of his life. Passion carries him the rest of the way, as it does with archery. His studies. The friendship with Sakusa that neither of them will admit to.</p><p>Not that it matters, because he fucks up and spends several agonizing seconds fumbling with his stupid arrow. Sakusa watches him with the eyes of god. His eyebrows scrunch closer every four seconds. It’s honestly kind of impressive.</p><p>“Nice one, Miya.” Sakusa raises his bow and takes aim like a show-off. He closes one eye and squints too, the whole deal. Atsumu suspects that, if it wasn’t so unsanitary, Omi-Omi’d be the type of person to lick a finger and stick it in the air to determine the wind’s direction—like an asshole, but one step further—but he has his own demons to face. Plus the gloves. Always the gloves. “Are we going to practice or are you going to keep fumbling your aim?”</p><p>“Fuck off, you know I’m more accurate than you!”</p><p>“Brilliant display of it so far.”</p><p>But the edges of Sakusa’s mouth are peeking out through the sharp lines of arms and muscle and practiced posture from his vantage point. Holy shit, he’s smiling. Atsumu’s witnessing a real smile right now from Sakusa Kiyoomi. Is he going to die?</p><p>“Holy shit, you like me,” he blurts out. “Are we friends? This is moving so fast—”</p><p>Sakusa nearly shoots him.</p><p>.</p><p>Karasuno arrives and they invite the monster in. In a bold display of trust, the prince is sent alone with a single knight for company. Both of his parents are impressed. Atsumu narrows his eyes in contemplation, but ultimately they are good people who would not capitalize on something like this, so he lets it go.</p><p>“I swear to god, Tsumu, you’d start a war in ten days if you were king,” Samu murmurs. Atsumu hates having a twin so fucking much.</p><p>And then the prince enters the room. And then the black hole gorges itself whole and presents itself anew as a stranger who is an anomaly and gravitational pull and the unmistakable figurehead of their main enemy, all in one convenient little bundle. <em>Great</em>, the universe sneers, <em>now you could just eat him up</em>. Atsumu wants to die.</p><p>“I’m Hinata Shouyou,” the boy crafted from the sun says, gaze flickering over to Atsumu’s direction. “Please take care of me.”</p><p>This isn’t just cruel. It’s a decimation.</p><p>.</p><p>(“You’re restless,” Samu had said the day before Karasuno arrived.</p><p>They were by the castle gates, open for a messenger who needed to talk to the king or something. Atsumu was leaning against the stone wall, swinging a leg around, scattering stray pebbles . Okay, he was a little restless. Who the fuck cared?</p><p>“Get out of your own head, dipshit.” A fist slammed into his shoulder. Atsumu hissed and pulled back, already opening his mouth when Samu continued, “Listen, can’t you just—”</p><p>“So he is moping.” Sunarin didn’t bother to wipe the pleased expression off his face. He nodded in Samu’s direction. “Told you.”</p><p>Atsumu scowled. “Shut your damn mouth—”</p><p>“You could always get intel if it’ll make you feel like you’re actually doing something.” Samu looked about as confused as he did. Sunarin rolled his eyes as he finished whatever-the-fuck-flavor of chuupet he had in his hand. “See if you can find out more about the inner workings of his kingdom? What, is this a new concept? You got the prince of Karasuno coming right here, in our territory, and you weren’t gonna take advantage even a little?”</p><p>Atsumu blinked. “No, because some of us are fuckin’ <em>normal</em>, Sunarin, what the fuck?”</p><p>“You mean useless.”</p><p>“It’s not a bad idea,” Samu muttered, loud enough to cut him off. The universe was against him. “Gives you something to do besides be the trophy husband.”</p><p>Atsumu slammed a hand against the stone wall. The chill settled in right before the pinpricks of pain did, but dammit, he was stubborn. “<em>I’m</em> the trophy husband?”</p><p>Samu and Sunarin didn’t grace him with a response.</p><p>“Man, fuck both of you! I’m going to the range!”)</p><p>.</p><p>Yeah, what the hell. Hinata Shouyou is sitting next to him, fidgeting quietly, and every glance strikes a chord in the room. Ricochets right into that stupid chest cavity of his that’s still daydreaming about orange skies or something else equally as unreachable.</p><p>What the hell is his luck.</p><p>.</p><p>When the meeting ends, Atsumu walks away from the black hole and goes to the stables.</p><p>He gets a saddle around his favored horse of the day when “Atsumu-san, where are you going?” interrupts him.</p><p>So the gravitational pull has decided he is the centerpoint of interest. Tragic, really.</p><p>Hinata Shouyou stands at the doorway, one hand on the wall as he stares at Atsumu with a sharpness that has no place with any of the expressions he had previously been acquainted with. He feels sick. Already, this heaviness is desaturating the strange wonder of their first meeting—what he is quickly wishing was their only meeting with a bitterness that threatens to explode across the hollow of his chest. It sits unoccupied still. An inexorable kindness.</p><p>“Hinata Shouyou, right?” Atsumu doesn’t turn around, but his arms stop moving. Whether this is of their own volition is not something he bothers asking. The bitterness has long since ballooned out, resting in his lungs and digging into his pleura with an unearned vengeance. Live and let live has never been his style. “None of your business. If anyone asks, tell ‘em I’ll be back soon.”</p><p>“Why would anyone ask me?” The wariness careens into something not quite safe, but it settles softer over Hinata’s mouth than anything he had pulled since they met again. “But sure, Atsumu-san!”</p><p>Atsumu hates it a little or a lot more than he should because Hinata’s so painfully entangled with the beginning of a descent already, from pulling him out of the water to curling his hand around the orange-reds of the air, sleepy and oscillating like magic. Another form of salvation. One of Atsumu’s defenses, fallen with no one to bear witness to it. And this is not something he can swan dive into with reckless abandon. Two kingdoms are at stake in Hinata’s monstrously focused gaze. Atsumu hates this. Atsumu fucking hates this.</p><p>“I thought it was custom for someone’s betrothed to show them around their kingdom?” Hinata’s mouth presses together in a vague notion of a smile. “I could be wrong, though. I don’t mind waiting.”</p><p>And he had been so close to forgetting what a pain political power struggles were. Hinata Shouyou’s stupid dagger-like monster eyes dart to the saddle Atsumu’s lowered with unnerving intensity and he knows, instantly, that this isn’t the first set of rules Hinata’s had to dance his way around. A chill beckons. The glacier, coming back to play.</p><p>“Nah, you’re right.” Atsumu refuses to slump over. He is allergic to losing and he will paint that fact over everything if he has to. “It’s rude to keep a guest waiting, huh? Let’s go.”</p><p>.</p><p>They duck into the chapel because Atsumu no longer believes in miracles, but he wants to see Hinata’s stance on it.</p><p>The running consensus so far is that Hinata likes stained glass windows, which, big deal, they all do, but this infatuation freefalls into the reverent way he holds himself as he steps forward towards the center of the room. Carefully, like he’s sweeping the field for mines, but there’s frenetic energy to the eagerness of his gaze and the molten gold in his wondrous smile and the wide, wild shadows that lengthen on his neck as he tilts his head up and gasps in perceived delight or shock or any combination that exists, he doesn’t have the energy to define it himself. Atsumu once again curses the deities, because who the fuck puts this much fascination in one person? He now has to battle this too. A magnanimous push-pull that’s another Tuesday morning for Hinata and edging closer to a pulse point for Atsumu. Fantastic.</p><p>“The stained glass,” Hinata whispers, as if he hadn’t been abundantly worshipping them moments before. No, Atsumu did not stare. “It’s so cool.”</p><p>Atsumu walks up to him, fiery curiosity and all. “You act like you haven’t seen it before.”</p><p>“I have, but it’s been a while.” Hinata’s eyes are roaming the ceiling. “Not since the—” His eyes snap back onto Atsumu’s “—oh.”</p><p>A crack in the wall. Something Hinata had let slip. Atsumu’s not stupid enough to think he can capitalize on this specific opportunity, but the very sight makes him optimistic.</p><p>“Since what?”</p><p>Hinata’s mouth twitches slightly. He might be kind of insane. “You’re not subtle!” His eyes curve into planes too kind for hallowed ground. “I know what you’re trying to do. It’s not gonna work.”</p><p>And he’s <em>so</em> proud of what? This? It’s not like knowing makes the battle any easier, it just means he knows he’s in the war at all.</p><p>“Not what I was trying to do,” Atsumu says honestly, “but if it keeps you on your toes, I don’t mind.”</p><p>Hinata blinks. His mouth gives way to a chasm of a smile, slicing through the earth with no regard for the consequences. No regard for any of this. Certainly not for Miya Atsumu’s struggle to reconcile the hollow in his chest with reality.</p><p>“Me?” And the pointless, reckless quality of his gentle mockery comes in full force yet again. “If you say so, Atsumu-san, but I wouldn’t count on it!”</p><p><em>Figurehead for the enemy state</em>, his tightening grip chastises. <em>Think of all the ways Hinata Shouyou and his magnetic smile could sabotage you</em>. But the hollow is as stubborn as the rest of him. The revulsion grows with it.</p><p>.</p><p>The kitchen is the next and last destination because Atsumu can see dying light fight its way through tinted glass and decides to end it here. For today. If he’s lucky, forever.</p><p>“In here,” he calls as he props open the door to the foyer.</p><p>Hinata, having the time of his goddamn life, bounds over, all perilous excitement as he plants his feet in front of Atsumu. “Where’re we going?”</p><p>“How about you, I dunno, come with me and find out?” Atsumu tries to sound annoyed and it tiptoes into petulant. Hinata is still looking at him, still watching like something will take shape along the bridge of his nose, and his gaze is intense but Atsumu hates losing. “Stop looking at me like that, geez.”</p><p>“Oh, I’m sorry.” A careless hand curls around his elbow. Atsumu’s heart flops around like—who gives a shit, he’s gonna die. “Am I scaring you?”</p><p>The sun is dying outside but Hinata still seizes his attention with that same orange-toned laughter, brushing against his skin in the dim light. Atsumu knows this is dangerous, knows it’s like poking a fireplace and watching red creep onto the tips of his fingers, but he’s just curious, okay. There’s just so<em> much</em> of Hinata to take in.</p><p>“‘Course not,” Atsumu says as he steps out after Hinata, “there’s nothing to be scared of.”</p><p>.</p><p>The walk to the kitchen is quick. There’s no time to talk because Hinata jumps around like the world is up for grabs and he’s eating his fill, and Atsumu should really fucking focus.</p><p>“So, here’s the—”</p><p>“Woah, this place is huge!” Hinata is off like a bullet, striding across the dining hall to practically throw himself through the opening at the other end. He’s boundless. Still trailing that warmth across Atsumu’s thoughts with a power no one should have over him. Over anyone, for that matter.</p><p>“What the hell,” he mutters to himself. Runs a hand along the seams of his pants, just to be safe. Then he follows, dutifully.</p><p>Inside the kitchen, Hinata’s showing a restraint that’s been missing all afternoon, hands away from the cabinets as his eyes roam the countertops. Leftover strawberry cake and Sunarin’s chuupets lay abandoned, sadly staring back.</p><p>Atsumu sighs heavily as he chucks the chuupets into a random cabinet. He would have taken the blame for something that was definitely Komori’s doing, and he was not interested in getting in trouble. Hinata tracks this with far too much vested interest, bordering on innocent curiosity.</p><p>“You ever had these before?” he asks, holding one up before throwing it into another cabinet. Sunarin can find these himself. It’ll be like a scavenger hunt.</p><p>Hinata shakes his head. That strange curiosity grows, knocking against his own brain and demanding entrance. “No. What are those?”</p><p>Atsumu, crouched over, stills. Is this a trick? This has gotta be a trick. But what the hell can Hinata learn from knowing what chuupets are? It’s not like it’s some government secret, right? There’s no way. Or maybe he wants him to think—</p><p>Is Hinata capable of that? Sun-kissed, unmarred by the gods and all? There is a game to play here, and admittedly, Atsumu’s not playing it well, but he’s not losing, so therefore Hinata isn’t winning and maybe he still has a chance.</p><p>Or is the plan to get him to overthink? Shit, he’s already lost.</p><p>He straightens. Hinata, curious, unnerving stare fixed in place, is still waiting for him. Lord, he’s gonna start thinking he’s being genuine at this rate.</p><p>“Chuupet.” What the hell even. If this is some conspiracy, it’s the stupidest one he’s ever heard of. Atsumu doesn’t bother to hide his disgust. “Sunarin’s favorite. I hate ‘em, but I’m not supposed to say that out loud.”</p><p>And Hinata <em>grins</em>. Bright-eyed, soft at the edges, the molting hot sun in the part of his lips. The moment tastes a little too much like magic. Atsumu wants to spit it out, but he is not as immune as he wants to be.</p><p>“Atsumu-san,” Hinata’s saying, “what’s your favorite food, then?”</p><p>Yeah, none of this feels political. But this is so dizzying that Atsumu can’t help but feel there’s something under their feet that he’s missing. Is food a code word for something? The time Karasuno could storm the castle? His head hurts.</p><p>Hinata has auspiciously kept the smile on—he might be smiling wider, actually—and his chest lurches.</p><p>“Mine?” Atsumu crouches again. Mostly to be able to look away, but he’d rather drown than admit that. “Why do you need to know?”</p><p>He can’t see Hinata’s expression. He successfully convinces himself he doesn’t want to know for all of two seconds until Hinata says, “Huh? We’re engaged, though? Shouldn’t I want to know more about you?” and some long-limbed spirit inside of him rises from the grave and tosses up his ribs in retribution.</p><p>What does he even say to that? How does he respond to the slight tremble in his own arms, first of all? The magic, impossibly, lingers. Who summons a black hole like that and commands it to stay for so long?</p><p>“Awfully kind of you for something neither of us have any control over,” he says to the pans in the cupboard.</p><p>“Shouldn’t we be nice to each other?” Atsumu is either delusional or he can hear the pout in Hinata’s voice. “We’ll be around each other for a while, you know. Doesn’t hurt.”</p><p>Atsumu knows what he’s doing. He knows the exact moment Hinata recognizes too, the way his smile dulls in the thin strips of light from the half-broken lamp overhead. Hinata’s definitely done this tango before.</p><p>The unspoken lines of the battleground have been redrawn. Half of it is on Hinata’s terms and Atsumu resents this. It occurs to him, quietly, that he might be way in over his head, but the day he swallows defeat is the day he dies. “Nice try,” he says, rising, “but I ain’t that easy.”</p><p>Hinata laughs. It sounds like a tailspin. How the hell does something sound like a tailspin. “It’d be irresponsible of me to reveal everything, I’m not stupid! Besides—oh! I never got to ask.”</p><p>Atsumu looks at him. His hands, balled tightly into fists. The steady demeanor he maintains. Oh, how he wants to know what his expression from earlier looked like. No, he’s not stuck on that. “Ask what?”</p><p>“Are you okay?” Hinata uncurls a hand and gestures vaguely towards his chest. “With, y’know.”</p><p>Right, the almost-drowning thing that Atsumu had thought they wordlessly agreed not to talk about. “Oh.” Atsumu airily waves a hand around. “You still remember that?”</p><p>“Atsumu-san,” Hinata says sagely. “You almost drowned. It’s kinda hard to forget.”</p><p>What a legacy he’s leaving behind. Just his luck, indeed.</p><p>.</p><p>Atsumu topples onto his bed with a bone-deep exhaustion he hasn’t felt in ages. He deserves this small display of childishness, he thinks, after the menace that was Hinata Shouyou’s company for longer than he intended.</p><p>It goes like this: the kitchen detour was supposed to be thirty minutes at most. The time ended up edging dangerously close to two hours before Hinata let him go (or he let Hinata go—someone let someone go—<em>whatever</em>) and it was. Whatever. He’s all jumpy and his pulse wouldn’t stop stuttering whenever Hinata did his awful black-hole laughter, but it’s whatever.</p><p>The worst part is, it wasn’t even productive. Neither of them had slipped up. There was nothing Atsumu could add to his notes except <em>Hinata Shouyou is good at deflecting</em> which isn’t even worth writing in, but he wrote it in anyway. <em>Good at deflecting</em>. What a joke. Where could that even get him?</p><p>The hollow laughs in aching clarity, makes grabby motions towards the jumble that is his ribs. Atsumu scowls. He’s fine. Everything’s fine, he has this under control. He just needs—there was strawberry cake on the counter earlier. He just needs to calm down.</p><p>.</p><p>He understands three facts in quick succession: Hinata Shouyou, the strawberry cake, the fork in his hand. Three more: the fork in Hinata’s mouth, the cake reduced to half a slice, the shadowy flickers of the stupid overhead lamp. Three more—</p><p>Hinata lets out a muffled string of syllables. The fork is still in his mouth. <em>At least</em>, Atsumu sends to the gods, <em>no crumbs spilled out of his damn mouth</em>. His blood sugar’s boiling over and he didn’t even have a bite of the damn cake.</p><p>“Hinata-kun,” he cooes. Sweetly. Like a knifepoint. “Is that the cake from earlier.”</p><p>“Uh, what?” Hinata pulls the fork out of his mouth. “It’s, uh…”</p><p>Atsumu waits patiently.</p><p>“Yeah, okay.” Hinata’s mouth slants awkwardly. “I was hungry?”</p><p>Social customs and geniality have dictated that he can’t deck Hinata Shouyou, but even Samu would say he deserved it, come on.</p><p>.</p><p>They make a rule: Hinata isn’t allowed to eat his midnight snacks. It’s a reasonable rule. Hinata’s impish grin doesn’t make negotiations any easier, but Atsumu has at least some patience left in him, so he ignores it.</p><p>With that settled, Atsumu lets slip the question careening in his head since he was accosted in the stables: “Why?”</p><p>Hinata jumps off the chair, searing curiosity imposing itself in the air as he spins in Atsumu’s direction. “Why what?”</p><p>“Why do—” Atsumu makes a sweeping motion. It looks like the kitchen but he means the castle, this strange small universe Hinata has trapped himself and Atsumu in for the day, where smiles hold sharper knives and hearts carve darker love lines. A treachery to admit to anything, here. He knows Hinata knows. “—<em>this?</em> Any of this?”</p><p>He receives a long look in reply. The glacier is back, wielding an arrow between its teeth. “Atsumu-san.” And Hinata’s voice is a whirlwind, a warning. A dwarf star, spitting out flares of light in pure spite. His smile turns into bronze lines clawing for silver, his eyes a focal point of absurd solemnity. “I’m just doing what I’m supposed to, like you.”</p><p>The dwarf star is imploding. A shiver spikes through his chest, prods the hollow open with insistent fingers. A shapeless sort of kindness reforms in his mouth, slots into something resembling sympathy. It tastes like defeat. Atsumu spits it out with a disproportionate amount of pride.</p><p>It takes nine billion years for the farthest star to grace the earth with its dying glory, after all. “Well, if you’re gonna be so honest about it, may the best man win, Hinata-kun.”</p><p>.</p><p>The obscenely early morning finds Atsumu at the shooting range, nocking a bow with no shortage of impatience. He’s still weirdly buzzed from the indefinable mess that was his morning and the burning synergy of Hinata’s feral grin. Samu can make him another cake if he stooped low enough to beg. He’s not moping over or lingering on it because he doesn’t mope or linger on things by principle. He’s fine.</p><p>“Oh, you’re awake.” Sakusa is next to him, extra centimeters of height scraping off the edge of the horizon from his immediate viewpoint. His curls are more ruffled than usual, but only by one iota, because Sakusa Kiyoomi is irritatingly perfect and perfectly irritating and whatever else falls into that list of asshole behaviors. “Why the fuck are you up right now.”</p><p>“No,” Atsumu says firmly, “you don’t get to accuse me of shit when you’re here too.”</p><p>Sakusa huffs. “Tsukasa thought he heard someone knocking shit over in the storage room. I figured only one person here would be stupid enough to go out this early.”</p><p>“We are friends,” Atsumu supplies, wonder in the violet shades peeking out from Omi-Omi’s slightly-messier curls. “We’re friends! You really—”</p><p>“Miya. Shut up.” Sakusa stabs an angry hand out at his bow. “Go back inside. You can obsess over your aim later.”</p><p>“I don’t <em>obsess</em>—”</p><p>“Oh, don’t start.” The stabby motion translates impressively in the glare he bestows upon him. There’s so much in sheer darkness, Atsumu marvels. Maybe it’s some sort of spell. If he asked, he’d be killed on the spot. “You look at that bow like you could feast on archery your entire life.”</p><p>Atsumu doesn’t remember when he asked for the analysis, thanks. “You know what, Omi-kun?” The extra centimeters sneer at him like some undeserving acolyte but if he doesn’t get a pedestal, neither does Sakusa Kiyoomi. “I know you don’t sanitize your bow after you’re done sometimes. It’s the one thing you don’t go insane over trying to clean.”</p><p>Sakusa, unflinching, looks him in the eye. “I’ve come to terms with this years ago. Archery is the one thing I can stand to let in.”</p><p>“Let in?” Atsumu lets his grip loosen, but he doesn’t drop his arms. “Gimme one more shot, Omi-Omi. ”</p><p>Dawn cracks over the sky, spilling past the horizon and painting unrelenting orange into the curves of his fingers, the dips of the grip, the vibrating line of the string. All connected in some bruising certainty for a violent finale. When Atsumu lets go, gold cascades over the bullseye, the shadow standing like a badge of pride. It burns, almost like home. The remnants of iron follows, as does Sakusa’s steely stare.</p><p>“Yes,” he says eventually, as Atsumu tucks away his bow. “Let in.”</p><p>He looks like he wants to say more, in the open-close shutter way Sakusa adopts whenever he’s contemplating something serious. The mouth flutters and waves like the quiet disgrace Sakusa’s always kept close to his chest. It doesn’t matter. A person lives in the silence and they both know who it is.</p><p>“How’d you know?” Atsumu faces him. “That you let it in. When was it comfortable for you?”</p><p>“You’re asking a lot of questions today.”</p><p>“Just. Would you answer this.”</p><p>Sakusa flexes a hand in the still air. He does this whenever he’s nervous, Atsumu’s recognized that much from the months and years that are supposed to mean nothing to them.</p><p>“It’s when I could wholly focus on my bow.” Sakusa’s hands settle into fists. His gaze rests on Atsumu. Like a suspicion, like something itching to dig into his skin (metaphorically, because this is <em>Sakusa</em>) but not quite. “There was no room for anything else. Anything hidden.”</p><p>Sakusa’s gaze shifts. Takes on some sharper tone, like Atsumu had personally offended him or he saw something he despised in that way he has of looking through people like they’re glass bottles. His view’s all distorted, but his senses are eerily accurate, somehow. “What are you—”</p><p>“You were right, Kiyoomi,” Iizuna interrupts, sliding in next to Sakusa with his usual terrifying timing. He can kind of read minds, so he probably planned this or something. Atsumu wouldn’t put it past him. “It was Atsumu in the storage room, huh?”</p><p>“I didn’t knock anything over,” he snaps, but Iizuna’s fingers have already slotted into Sakusa’s and he has lost this round.</p><p>.</p><p>A few images are superimposed into his brain as the days go by: Hinata, materializing outside of his bedroom door, his smile demure. The ever-present excitement in the hungry way he drinks up everything Atsumu throws at him. The threats of deception, the fervent sincerity, the intermingling warmth on his cupid’s bow. Atsumu still hates it, but he answers the door one day and Hinata shows up in pajamas and comically awful bedhead, and his chest does little staccato beats.</p><p>“Atsumu-san,” Hinata whispers, “can you help me find something?”</p><p>“Why are you whispering?” Atsumu leans out, looks both ways in the hall. No, nothing to watch out for, they’re alone. “No one’s gonna hear you.”</p><p>“It just feels—” Hinata shrugs “—wrong, I guess? Oh well! Can you help?”</p><p>A sleep-toned smile is aimed in his direction, gold-spun, captivation sewn into it like nothing else belongs. It wraps itself around his wrist. Atsumu follows.</p><p>.</p><p>“A photograph,” Hinata tells him as they wander down the halls. He’s desperate enough that he’s checking the darkened corners at each turn. “I had it with me until yesterday and there’s like, no way I dropped it—”</p><p>“Calm down,” Atsumu mutters. “I’ll help you look. What’s in the photo?”</p><p>The scuffling behind him stops. Atsumu waits a second before turning around.</p><p>“It’s, uh.” The footsteps restart. “My little sister.”</p><p>“You have siblings?”</p><p>The footsteps stop again. What a strange cadence they’re dancing to.</p><p>“Well, yeah.” Hinata’s voice comes out strung. “One. She’s super young.” There’s nothing political about the seven shades of stress coloring his voice.</p><p>
“You sound way too down, Hinata-kun.” Atsumu catches the next words lurking in his mouth and evaluates them with no small amount of worry. He chews it up, but finds he still wants to say it. “Here, tell you what. If we can’t find the photo, I’ll give you some of Samu’s cake. He made some yesterday.”</p><p>Hinata’s eyes dart to him. The outer shell of doubt melts into a slow, contemplative smile. All dazzling, surrounded by dusty floors, caught by the dim light scattered across the walls. Witnessing it feels like stealing honey, some sort of small crime he shouldn’t get caught doing.</p><p>“Really?” Hinata breathes out.</p><p>Atsumu grants himself this reprieve and walks faster. “Yeah, sure.”</p><p>.</p><p>They find the photograph. Hinata waves it around and describes his sister as <em>the cutest ever!!</em> when he clutches it close to his chest. Atsumu half-heartedly asks about his parents and Hinata gives half-measured responses back, clearly crafted but dulled in quality. There is a family life piecing itself together in front of Atsumu’s eyes, and it’s the usual deal: caring, but overworked parents who don’t spend time with their kids out of necessity. He’s watched it spawn all kinds of mother issues or father issues or people issues or just issues-issues, and maybe Hinata has one or all of them, but all it drags out from his chest right now is a bitterly nostalgic smile.</p><p>“Sounds lovely,” Atsumu drawls as he cuts away a slice of cake because he still got roped into doing this. “Who told you about the betrothal, then?”</p><p>Hinata collapses into a chair. “My advisor,” he mumbles, spinning his fork in the air. It catches the light like a disco ball, mercilessly flickering around the room. “He told me three weeks before I got here! It was a big surprise, y’know.”</p><p>Atsumu snorts. “Not like I asked for this either. Caught me by surprise just as much as it caught you, I bet.”</p><p>“Is that a challenge?” The fork periodically punctures the air. “Because I—”</p><p>“Yeah, no.” Atsumu serves himself a far larger slice. “<em>No</em>,” he repeats when Hinata looks at him with an idle curiosity capable of tearing him apart. “Was just wondering.”</p><p>.</p><p>The midnight snack runs continue. To the detriment of Atsumu’s snack supply, amount of sleep, sanity.</p><p>The overhead lamp is still shitty. Hinata’s grins are just as luminescent in the half-dark. Neither of them reveal anything, except Atsumu begins to learn what Hinata looks like when his expression falls on a strange side of fond. The snack runs continue.</p><p>.</p><p>“Fatty tuna,” he blurts out at the kitchen counter. He’s so desperate, he’s stealing from Sunarin now. Answering Hinata’s question, too. How low he has stooped. “My favorite food. If you were still wondering.”</p><p>Across from him, Hinata’s lips curve up. Quietly, inevitably. On the brink of something.</p><p>.</p><p>In one of the watchtowers, five days later:</p><p>“How far have you traveled, Atsumu-san?” Hinata asks, leaning over the edge. Atsumu, back flat against the wall, watches his hands tremble as he takes in the sight.</p><p>“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he calls back.</p><p>They’re watching the sunrise because Hinata, the gremlin, had insisted on staying up to see it and Atsumu wasn’t putting up with the view from the castle gates. It’s beautiful down there until the forest acts like Sakusa’s extra centimeters and blocks the part everyone wants to see, and that’s not happening on his watch.</p><p>There’s nothing to gain from this. But.</p><p>“You never answered my question.” Hinata doesn’t sound angry. He’s not even looking at him, but his voice is so innocuous it curves right back into accusatory. “I haven’t traveled much.”</p><p>Atsumu stays silent.</p><p>Hinata tilts his head back, wild strands flying in front of his eyes as he laughs. The sound spins in the palm of his hand and Hinata just doesn’t stop. “No fair! You gotta share something too!”</p><p>The sunrise tentatively splits the sky behind him. It’s like one of those cliche movie moments, the kind where the love interest is the focal point and mesmerizing light stretches out behind them, painting them as some sort of messiah, and the camera and the viewer and the main character all turn into the lover, hopelessly spiraling in some awful parallel dimension of breathlessness. But it’s <em>not</em>.</p><p>“Atsumu-san?” Hinata, asking again. The skyline brightens. Orange licks over his mouth, uncertain. “Are you okay?”</p><p>A fistful of his heart, resurfacing like this. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be? What, you worried about me?”</p><p>“Yeah.” Hinata’s mouth curves into impossibly determined angles, quiet and sharp. “I like talking to you. I thought you’d know that by now!”</p><p>This should be illegal.</p><p>He backtracks. “Not far.” Gravitational law has just been flipped on his head and Atsumu feels displaced. He wants to tell him anything. Everything. Something. “I’ve gone to Itachiyama before, that’s all. Why do you wanna know?”</p><p>“I just think—” Hinata’s expression remolds itself into his usual brand of earnest excitement. Look at that, Atsumu’s been around him long enough to have a <em>usual</em> to come back to “—you’re super interesting! I wanna know more about you.”</p><p>So painfully earnest. So honestly endearing.</p><p>“What the—you can’t just <em>say</em> things like that, what the hell, Shouyou-kun?” And Hinata’s name is hallowed ground he steps on before he can properly think about it. Ah. Don’t even bother with killing him, just bury him right now. “What happened to ‘I’m just doing what I’m supposed to’, huh?”</p><p>“Shouyou-kun?” Gravitational law is nonexistent at this point. Hinata, the pivot point at the center, sends it into a whirlwind with a single gaze. A knowing, kind, thunderstruck thing, probably capable of shaking the heavens. “So we’re on first name basis!”</p><p>“It’s not—”</p><p>“I like it!” Hinata—dammit, Shouyou has turned away, but the universe still follows him. “It sounds nice. I mean. Coming from you.”</p><p>His last words come out in a mumble but he might as well have shouted them out from a megaphone. <em>Coming from you</em>. What the hell is he supposed to do with something that gracious?</p><p>(Atsumu wants to— )</p><p>“Alrighty, then,” he says quietly to Shouyou’s back. There is no game here, nothing but the dawn creeping mischievous fingers along Shouyou’s shoulders and his own shivering, illicit attentiveness. </p><p>.</p><p>Atsumu lies in bed later that night, wide awake, staring at a ceiling he has never bothered to touch. The sweetness pervades his tongue even now. Hinata Shouyou cracks his mind open, even now. Tearing him apart, like this, in the privacy of his sanctuary.</p><p>.</p><p>“You need to stop,” Sakusa tells him. For once, they aren’t out in the range. They’re in the study, doing official prince things, or so it goes. Really, it’s the same ritual of Sakusa signing something, handing it to Atsumu with no small amount of vengeance, and leaning back with a sigh. But like, a regal sigh, because he’s Sakusa Kiyoomi.</p><p>“Stop what, Omi-kun?” Atsumu pretends to read the fine print and resists the urge to fold it into a paper plane. This week, the issue’s about border relations with wheat or something, he’s not sure since he thought they solved this last week. “You gotta be specific or I could—”</p><p>Sakusa’s next signature comes out as a vicious bastardization of his name. “Don’t finish that sentence,” he threatens. Which is hilarious, Atsumu thinks, because he’s Miya Atsumu. “Stop dancing around Hinata Shouyou. It’s irritating to watch.”</p><p>“I’m not <em>dancing</em> around Hinata-kun—”</p><p>“Oh?” Sakusa’s hand stills. “You’re not? Why’d you start avoiding Hinata, then?”</p><p>“I’m not—”</p><p>“<em>Oh?</em>” The hand snaps back into motion, but Sakusa’s mouth continues with it. Maybe this is the retribution for his sweater, all those months ago. “You’re not? He’s been looking for you. You were stuck to his side like glue until two days ago. What changed?”</p><p>The thing about Sakusa is when he gets going, he just runs like a motor engine until it hiccups or he dies. No alternative. It’s cool in the same way a fledgling bird leaving the nest for the first time is, the whole what-the-hell-you-might-die factor a big part in the inherent altruism of stepping in. This is one of those situations, except Atsumu is the fledgling bird and he really is going to die.</p><p>“Wait—what are you—”</p><p>“Don’t get me wrong,” and the poison-tipped arrow aimed in Atsumu’s direction, “I understand why you’re doing it. But I think it’s stupid.”</p><p>Oh, there goes his stomach. “Where the hell is this coming from?”</p><p>Sakusa shoves another paper in his direction. “You’re a dumbass. He’s already betrothed to you. Just fucking talk to him.”</p><p>The bird’s migrated to his chest, pecking an unsteady rhythm against his sternum. His lips, of their own accord, unlock a shaky laugh. “That’s rich.” Atsumu scrawls his ugliest signature yet. “Remember that time you didn’t wanna talk things out with—”</p><p>“Miya.” The warning light is bathed in red and washes over the room, the fine print, his hands. Digging into his fingertips like a blood clot. “You think I’m saying this because I don’t know what happens when you don’t say anything?”</p><p>“Convoluted choice of words there, Omi-kun,” Atsumu says, if only to avoid addressing the <em>I care about you</em> tucked away in the gaze that brushes against his forehead, something unavoidably gentle, shaded in silver. They’ve never been the type to give weight to the thoughts swirling between them. They’re both stubborn like that. “But it’s not that easy.”</p><p>“Or.” Sakusa reaches out and closes the notebook. Their last document of the day. “You could stop making it so hard and just accept it.”</p><p>The flick of Atsumu’s wrist as he signs is almost gentle. “Tsukasa teach you that?”</p><p>Some harrowing slice of affection makes it known across what little of Sakusa he can make out. It settles in as easily as a foreign emotion could slide into rib cages, and maybe that’s what makes the smile on Sakusa’s face terrifying. There is a shapeless sort of terror that accompanies unconditional love.</p><p>“Yes.” His tone is uniform, achingly fond. “He did.”</p><p>.</p><p>He finds Shouyou in the library. Not a surprise, since he’s been haunting this place recently, consuming whatever he can get his hands on with a hunger that unnerves even Sakusa. And he discovers that Shouyou has <em>reading glasses.</em> Circle shaped, pushed up his nose as he sits, quietly absorbed. This is ridiculously unfair, Atsumu thinks, as he moves, not entirely of his own volition. But that’s how the game’s been played up until this point, so he doesn’t complain.</p><p>Shouyou notices him before he gets to him. “Atsumu-san!” He closes the book, fixes his already-straightened glasses, and hops off his seat. “Where’ve you been? I couldn’t find you.”</p><p>The words oscillate, shaky, and land straight in the hollow in his chest like bricks. It stacks, something unknown slipping mortar in-between and forming an unsteady foundation. Wanted, unwanted, he honestly doesn’t know anymore.</p><p>“Around.” And Shouyou cracks a grin as surely as dawn breaks through the sky. And Atsumu tastes red-orange on his tongue and rests the weight of it in his mouth, just for kicks. None of it feels like losing. “Let’s go. I wanna show you something.”</p><p>.</p><p>The sheer delight on Shouyou’s face as they near the chapel still feels new. Atsumu wordlessly leads.</p><p>“Why’re we here?” Shouyou asks, bouncing on his heels. He stands in the center of the room because he doesn’t fear god and the tabernacle beckons, irrationally.</p><p>Atsumu hums. “Felt like a place to go to confess my sins, is all.”</p><p>Shouyou narrows his eyes. “Really? You’d be so honest?”</p><p>“Just trying something out.” Atsumu looks at him. The light in his eyes, woven from silver, strung into every breath like some didactic being decided he was worthy of bestowing a lesson onto. He’s beautiful, if Atsumu dared to think it. Mercilessly captivating, if he dared to think further.</p><p>“What?” Shouyou, sunshine boy, monster-in-training turns to him like a sunflower in bloom, all open eagerness. All seizing his chest in some weird tailspin, because once again, pivot point.</p><p>“I want to know more about you, but like, organically.” Before Shouyou can open his mouth, Atsumu says, “And it’s not because I’m shit at it! I was doing pretty damn good, I just.”</p><p>Shouyou stands there for a moment, lips parted, his gaze unfocused. He blinks and snaps himself back into focus, blazing vengeance settling into his expression, all ecstatic wonder in full force aimed at Atsumu’s direction. The entire damn solar system, greeting him like this.</p><p>Atsumu is the bird, wings fluttering helplessly against the sweltering sun, the wind smacking him in the face. Hinata Shouyou’s devotion weighs him down, a gravity that entices far more than it should. Oh, the shining silver in his face. Oh, the petrichor, golden in the face of Shouyou’s certainty. Oh, the fascination burning against the base of his spine, the back of his hand, the brush against his cheekbones.</p><p>Oh. “I’m in love with you,” Atsumu finishes.</p><p>Shouyou stops. Moving or breathing, Atsumu isn’t sure. He tilts his head, appraising. “Huh,” he mumbles.</p><p>Then he, sun-dappled spirit and all, propels himself into Atsumu’s space—beautifully, recklessly—and kisses him like the world will reorient itself if he does. Atsumu doesn’t believe in miracles, but thunder crackles beneath his feet, breaking the world in two, and he can make an exception, just this once.</p><p>.</p><p>Maybe this weakness in the back of his throat or the corner of his lips whenever Shouyou so much as places a hand on his shoulder is retribution, too. Atsumu doesn’t care. He feeds into the inevitability and goes to him, awestruck wonder clinging to his skin in abundance.</p><p>There are still things he doesn’t know. He’s not stupid. There is a world Shouyou keeps out of reach for the time being, but he’s doing the same thing. They’ll take a sledgehammer to each other’s defenses one of these days. It’ll happen.</p><p>Atsumu, resting a hand against the wall, smiles. Slowly, unstoppably, as the world shifts around him like this.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><strong>edit 10/22:</strong> <a href="https://twitter.com/komosunaist">twt</a> | <a href="https://curiouscat.qa/komosuna">cc</a></p><p>hello reveals are up now!! if you knew who I was bc of the side ships I am absolutely not surprised. listen I was being indulgent, if I can shove kmsn into something I Will. also jinn is entirely responsible for iizusaku blame jinn</p><p>royalty au was honestly really scary for me! I only have about two weeks and a couple days to write this bc I can't time manage and I was working on something else, so I had to try to speed through the worldbuilding...there were going to be some scenes where atsumu and hinata went out and explored the kingdom but I genuinely had no time. they did it in my heart</p><p>I may continue this? with any of the three ships and bc kmsn deserves their own royalty au but absolutely no promises......my attention span moves too fast for me to reliably say anything but I just. I just think royalty aus are neat</p></blockquote></div></div>
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